Well, since you're asking here, sure:
Don't ever give your email address to anyone.
If you start with a fresh address, great. If you want to keep your exsting address, do a search for spam filtering - a bunch of stuff will come up that may help you deal with the spammers who already have your address and are sending spam to you.
In either case, sign up with spamgourmet, and don't give your address to anyone (you can make rare exceptions
) -- use disposable addresses instead. If you start with a fresh address, make sure it's a) with an obscure service provider and/or b) fairly long and not likely to be spammed directly by programs that use the dictionary and related techniques to send email to yahoo and hotmail accounts and the like. Using disposable addresses conscientiously with such a new address will pretty much *eliminate* spam. If you keep your existing address, start using disposable adddresses anyway, since it'll help keep the problem from getting worse.